Chapter 19: The Gate

I did not run.

I stood up from the head table, and I said, "Please stay where you are."

Then I walked out of the great hall with the night housekeeper at my side and Dermot a step behind.

Sixty guests came after us anyway.

They spilled out onto the front steps in their evening clothes, with their phones lit.

"The gate," I said to the housekeeper.

"The driver has the truck across it, miss. I told him at the first course."

"You expected him?"

"I have known your brother since he was nine," she said. "He always comes back for the money."

The service drive ran along the side of the house, past the kitchen.

A black car sat on it with its lights off and its trunk open.

Dorian came out of the kitchen door with a canvas bag over his shoulder, bent under the weight.

He saw the steps full of people, and he stopped.

I saw him count the phones.

"Put it down, Dorian," I said.

"It's mine."

"Put it down."

"Pauline told me this was my share. Dad promised me!"

He ran.

He did not run for the car, because the car could not get out.

He ran across the lawn, straight down the long grass between the tables, where Legacy Day had been set a month before.

His polished shoes slid, and he caught himself, and he kept going toward the dark line of the oaks.

"Stop him!" somebody shouted.

Nobody had to be asked twice.

The driver came off the cab of the truck at a dead run.

The cook came out of the kitchen with a rolling pin in one hand, and two maids in black came behind her holding up their skirts.

Half the board came down the steps in their good shoes.

The old man who taught me chess shouted, "Mind the ice on the gravel!"

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